"As a result of "the rise of the rest," U.S. power is declining in a relative sense. Blah Frickin" Blah Blah Blah"

And, must.

Stay.

Awake. More than a mouthfull is a waste in this regard (not so much the traditional regard haha!), so let's just cut to it shall we - with a few well placed shots at a pair of Declinationism's biggest boobs.

This is a new world, very different from the America-centric one we
got used to over the last generation. 44 has succeeded in preserving
and even enhancing U.S. influence in this world precisely because he has
recognized these new forces at work. 44 has traveled to the emerging
nations and spoken admiringly of their rise.

By emphasizing multilateral organizations,
alliance structures and international legitimacy, 44 got results. It was
Chinese and Russian cooperation that produced tougher sanctions against
Iran. It was the Arab League’s formal request last year that made Western intervention in Libya uncontroversial.

LOLing this approach to foreign policy,
arguing instead to expand the military, act unilaterally,
and talk unapologetically. Chest-thumping triumphalism won’t help secure America’s
interests or ideals in a world populated by powerful new players.

In contrast, 42 did not go to the U.N. before bombing Serbia,
and 44 obtained U.N. resolutions to enforce a no-fly-zone in Libya
and offer humanitarian aid, and he then summarily far exceeded both by
bombing ground troops.

The opening of a U.S. embassy in Syria accomplished nothing, while China
and Russia hand-in-glove block American efforts to impose sanctions on
Damascus. The Arab League authorized American action in Libya and then
whined when we interpreted its so-so support as a green light for
bombing rather than merely giving the rebels military and material aid.
Libya is a blueprint for nothing, and that pattern will not be followed
in Syria. (Dang it)

Unfortunately, the U.S.-forced removal of a tyrant without the
presence of American ground troops — completely different from what we
did in Germany, Italy, Japan, Serbia, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq —
gives no guarantee that something just as bad cannot follow, as we are
seeing with the Arab Winter.

Even worse is
naïve and clumsy deal-making at the expense of American interests and
allies. It cannot be seriously argued that since 2009 China, Iran, NoKo, Russia, Syria, or Venezuela are either more reasonable toward,
or more deterred by, Great Satan. The old hot spots in
Afghanistan, Cyprus, Eastern Europe, Iraq, the Falkland Islands, Mexico,
North Africa, the former Soviet republics, Taiwan, and the West Bank
are not cooler than in 2009, for all the 2012 of 44"s cool, but more
likely warmer and more unstable.

BFF"s like Great Britain, Mapleleafland, India, Little Satan, or Poland are more rather than less friendly.

Our own massive debt, the rise of China, and the emergence of India and
Brazil as major economies are often offered as proof that post-Americans
should accept a new “lead from behind” role abroad. Yet in 1939 there
were more multipolar contenders — France, Britain, Germany, Russia, and
Japan — than there are now. And in varying ways all those rivals
deprecated an isolationist Depression-era America, despite the fact that
the U.S. had the world’s largest economy and had miraculously, just two
decades earlier, sent a million men to Europe in a single year to
ensure the allied victory over imperial Germany.

Long ago we first heard faddish talk of post-Americanism. Supposedly
superior models in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan energized throngs and
produced modern arms far more than did a Grapes of Wrath
America. Next, the declinists warned us about the ascendant Communist
Soviet Union, which overran Eastern Europe and Asia, and whose missiles
went up, unlike ours, which crashed on the launch pad. Then followed
Japan, Inc., in the 1970s, which was to own American golf courses, while
we were to tend them. Then in the late 1990s it was the turn of the
utopian European Union, which reminded Americans what a waste was our
military budget and how silly was our suspicion of man-made global
warming.

Currently, the fact that China has a bullet train and we do not
is supposed to convince us that half a billion Chinese never having
been to a Western-style doctor and the Chinese industrial landscape
resembling the area around Lake Erie circa 1920 simply don’t matter.

Unemployment remains high, economic growth sluggish. Federal oil leases
are canceled and pipelines not built. We did not pacify Iraq quickly,
and we remain bogged down in Afghanistan.

American population growth is robust; post-Japan, post-Europe, and
post-China are aging and shrinking. We are daily increasing our known
fossil-fuel reserves; those in Europe and China are declining. Copying
and rivaling America’s free-market economy are impressive Chinese
achievements, but hardly proof that China can likewise emulate our
Constitution, racial inclusion, transparency, or cultural dynamism.

And the 'rest"?

India is still straitjacketed by caste impediments, Europe by class
boundaries, China, Japan, and South Korea by sharp racial distinctions,
and the Arab world by insidious tribal loyalties.In contrast, America, alone of the major powers, is a multiracial open
society bound by one culture, where merit, more than race, tribe, birth,
or class, determines success.

When post-Americans unwisely talk about slashing the military, we still
should remember that all the world’s other carrier battle groups
combined will for decades lack the power of one of our eleven. The
productivity of American agriculture continues to be unsurpassed, in a
world that will become increasingly food short and hungry. And a notable
thing about American farming is that it has millions of acres idle or
allotted to subsidized biofuels, suggesting that we could easily produce
even more food than we do now.

China has riots; Russia has riots; Europe has riots; the Arab world is
one large riot these days. America has a few sputtering Occupy Wall
Street street carnivals.

Nor does the United Nations offer much hope of replacing American
influence. In Libya, the U.S. bragged that it had obtained U.N. approval
for a no-fly zone and humanitarian relief — but then had to violate
those resolutions in order to join its NATO allies in bombing Moammar
Qaddafi’s forces. Whether Iran lets off a nuclear weapon, or North Korea
uses one against South Korea or Japan, depends not on the U.N. Security
Council, or Chinese deterrence, but only on whether those rogue states
fear a response from the United States. Again, as far as Syria goes, the
U.N. is irrelevant.

A new Shanghai airport, a Brazilian Olympics, a new Russian pipeline, or
a new Indian enterprise zone still does not tell us much about the
underlying principles and values of nations that so far have not been
able to create transparent institutions, stable consensual
constitutions, sustainably lawful societies, and meritocratic, rather
than racially or tribally based, advancement of the sort that allows a
nation to meet crises, adapt, and grow stronger.

wHoA!

h0t!

~hEy Y"all! DoN"t MiSs GsGf~!

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